1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the field of in a mass customization build-to-order environment and more particularly to a build-to-order environment for manufacturing information handling systems.
2. Description of the Related Art
As the value and use of information continues to increase, individuals and businesses seek additional ways to process and store information. One option available to users is information handling systems. An information handling system generally processes, compiles, stores, and/or communicates information or data for business, personal, or other purposes thereby allowing users to take advantage of the value of the information. Because technology and information handling needs and requirements vary between different users or applications, information handling systems may also vary regarding what information is handled, how the information is handled, how much information is processed, stored, or communicated, and how quickly and efficiently the information may be processed, stored, or communicated. The variations in information handling systems allow for information handling systems to be general or configured for a specific user or specific use such as financial transaction processing, airline reservations, enterprise data storage, or global communications. In addition, information handling systems may include a variety of hardware and software components that may be configured to process, store, and communicate information and may include one or more computer systems, data storage systems, and networking systems.
It is known to manufacture information handling systems in a mass customization build-to-order environment, such as at that practiced by Dell Inc. In known build to order environments, a production order (or work order) is initiated in manufacturing for the specific fulfillment of a customer order. The association of the production order, and the specific products contained on the production order, remains fixed to the customer order. When all products contained on the production order are completed, the order is available to ship to the customer.
Challenges occur due to natural process variability that can cause one or more product items on a production order to be inordinately delayed in completion. In the case of an order containing multiple product items, this delay can lead to significant order accumulation within the manufacturing facility, awaiting the final product items to be completed. For all order types, a delayed product completion can lead to customer dissatisfaction if the delay extends beyond the committed order completion date. In other cases, production orders tied to specific customer orders in a build to order, mass customization environment can be considered sub-optimally sequenced within the work in progress of the production facility, even if such production orders are not yet considered delayed. In many cases, there may be other production orders that contain identical product items for which there are not equivalent concerns regarding order accumulation or customer dissatisfaction or for which other optimizing criteria are of a lower measurement.
A number of methodologies have been developed that relate to this issue. One known process is to initiate production orders that are not yet specifically associated to customer orders. The initiation of such orders can be based upon actual backlog of customer orders (built to order) or based on forecasted demand. Once production is completed, units of production can be associated to existing customer orders or placed in an inventory stock to then be associated with customer orders upon their receipt. For example, FIG. 1, labeled Prior Art, shows a block diagram of a build to order scenario with limited configurations. This methodology can allow for multiple unique product configurations to be processed, but becomes increasingly inefficient as the number of unique product configurations multiplies as customers are given the choice to select an increasing number of product options (mass customization).
As the number of potential configuration permutations increases in a mass customization environment, known manufacturing methodologies initiate production orders explicitly associated to unique customer orders. Using the explicitly associated build to order methodology, a number of solutions have been developed to mitigate work in progress sub-optimizing issues such as excessive order accumulation and specific late orders causing customer dissatisfaction. Within the factory processes, sub-optimized orders are identified and attempts to accelerate or expedite these identified products through the process cycle are developed. The attempts to accelerate or expedite the fabrication of these products can occur by giving these identified products a higher sequencing or scheduling priority on resources used to perform subsequent processing tasks. For example, FIG. 2 shows a block diagram of a built to order scenario in a mass customization environment where sub-optimized production order components are expedited within the production process. Alternate exception management processes may be implemented. For example, if a customer order is canceled whilst the associated production order is in progress, exception processes may be used to search for an un-started customer order with a matching product configuration, and re-associated the in-progress production order to the previously un-started customer order. Also for example, the exception processes may be used where product items tied to particularly troublesome customer orders can be expedited by identifying the problem product items and either restarting a new, replacement product item or swapping out an in-progress product item; all of which is manually managed using human intervention. And lastly, another method to mitigate the need for order accumulation is to allow partial shipping of customer orders.